


Bughead Drabbles

by flumen



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Mental Health Issues, One Shot Collection, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, purely indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-22 23:17:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18537472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flumen/pseuds/flumen
Summary: A collection of one-shot Bughead fics that come to mind as I dredge through the burning dumpster fire that is Riverdale. Are they the only reason I'm still watching the show? Mayhaps.Sporadic updates: this is just a place for little things I've written when the muse visits.





	Bughead Drabbles

**Author's Note:**

> A little exploration of s1 Betty's view of romance.

In her bedroom, Betty Cooper has exactly five pictures of Archie Andrews, 3 of Kevin Keller, 2 of her sister Polly, 1 of her parents and 1 of Jughead Jones that she had snuck in when she felt bad for not having one.

“We’ve known each other our whole lives, Jug.” She’d insisted when the suggestion of a selfie had sent his nose wrinkling. “And I’ve got a picture of all my other friends.” He gave a doubtful grumble at the word ‘friends’ which Betty deliberately and cheerfully misinterpreted as pre-shoot nerves.

“I’m just too photogenic, Betty, I’d hate to make you look bad.”

“One photo, and no matter what it looks like I’ll tuck it behind my third-grade picture and no one will ever have to see it.” He shifted uncomfortably and she could tell she was beginning to break him down. “Please, Juggie. It’d make me feel better just to know it was there.”

A few seconds later there was a new selfie in her camera-roll, the two of them shoulder to shoulder in their homeroom. She was beaming in that way she’d perfected, a little teeth but mainly lip and her head tilted so it brushed against his cheek. Jughead wasn’t red because Archie had once joked he had cold blood, like a snake, and never seemed to blush but he looked decidedly embarrassed and couldn’t commit to a smile.

She does tuck it behind her third-grade picture but only the part with her face so every time she sees it, it’s Jughead’s uncomfortable expression peering out at her. Most of the time she looks at it and feels fondness and a little exasperation. Occasionally it makes her inexplicably sad.

But the five photos of Archie Andrews never fail to draw a smile out of her. One from their joint 10th birthday party where he’s drenched from a water fight and dripping only slightly onto her nice cream dress, one from that time they did an escape room and got out in record time (they’re high fiving and when he’d followed up the gesture with a crack about the power of friendship she’d only died a little inside). One from their first day of high school when she’d tentatively wrapped an arm around his waist and thought about it all day when he pulled her closer, one of them pulling goofy faces when a late night study session had felt too wonderful and intimate not to commemorate. And her favourite in a heart-shaped frame on her bedside table: them at the middle school dance.

It is neither a very flattering nor a good quality photo. Archie’s grin looks like it’s tearing his face and his hair is spiked with sweat and copious gel. Her pupils are red from the flash and there’s frizz creeping into her hair, curled and down for the occasion. She disregards all these frivolous faults. She loves it because it’s a gift from him, a _Valentine’s Day_ gift from him, and she allows herself to indulge in the most fragile of hopes that there’s something meaningful in the heart he’s chosen to encapsulate them. Perhaps it was Archie’s little way of letting her know that her more-than-a-friend feelings weren’t entirely unreciprocated. Perhaps that silly middle school dance had meant something to him too. In the photo she is gazing up at him with dizzy devotion. He is smiling at the camera.

***

There are still 5 photos of Archie Andrews in Betty’s room, still 3 of Kevin Keller, 2 of her sister Polly, 1 of her parents and 1 of the fugitive Jughead Jones. Now a new addition has joined their ranks: one of Betty and Veronica in their River Vixens outfits, beaming and brandishing pom-poms. Veronica had taken one look at it and declared it sexy. Betty thinks that’s easy for her to say. Veronica does look sexy, blowing a kiss and her leg kicked back in the air with the playful grace of Marilyn Monroe. Betty looks giddy with delight and a little obviously sick with relief.

The photo of her and Archie on her bedside has been knocked over so his innocent grimacing face cannot be seen. Betty had kept catching his eye when she was trying to sleep and recognising in it the echoes of platonic fondness she had been desperately mistaking for love. It hurts her to finally be confronted with the fact that she has dedicated herself to a romance that never existed, looking for love in a cheap plastic frame a boy bought for his best friend because who else was going to buy her something for Valentine’s Day besides her sister or her gay best friend?

She knows her place now. She is pretty, mild Betty Cooper. She is like a natural monument, admired for being unfailingly generous, perky, _perfect_ but whose passive presence you would never dream of having a crush on. Betty imagines she will marry and have children just like her mother without anyone ever truly loving her. It’s inevitable: she is not the stuff of which real love stories are written.

***

A few weeks later there is a new photo of Jughead Jones in her room.

***

Betty’s Archie Andrews pictures have been regulated, moved to boards and her desk, cut back like heartstrings. She was a little obsessed and a lot more deluded looking back but hindsight is a wonderful thing and she can’t erase the long nights spent pining and the fantasies she’d cooked up so hopefully, they felt real.

She won’t throw them away. They’re good memories even without her crush on Archie. She can look at them like that now: good memories that belong to her, not the part Archie played in them.

The heart frame however has been thrown away and replaced with a new one, silver and gilted and so much more appropriate to her colour scheme. What was she doing with that tatty frame? This one suits the room like it was meant to be there.

In the frame she is kissing Jughead Jones on the cheek, the same cheek she had platonically brushed her head against the year before. He is looking at her with love, nothing more and nothing less, and when she looks at it she knows they are feeling the same. Now catching eyes with the boy on her bedside table never makes her heart ache. It makes it skip a beat.

In the corner of the frame, attached with a small crown magnet she’d instinctively purchased on an amazon trawl, is the old picture she’d taken for the sake of it. Kevin likes to teasingly refer to it as their relationship glo up. Privately Betty thinks it means so much more than that.

Betty Cooper will not suggest her growth is defined by a man, even _her_ man, but so much of it is encapsulated in Jugehad. She was not obsessed with her appearance but she was appearance obsessed. She’d latched onto Archie because she had been convinced they looked right together, that he was the one person in the world who could see her and love her unconditionally. Jughead doesn’t just see her, he knows her and he loves her differently to any way Archie ever has. She’s learning to know herself too.

And if Archie had also been a breath of fresh air between the bars of the regimented Cooper household, Jughead has knocked down the walls, grabbed her hand and let her fill her lungs with freedom. He represents her rebellious awakening: the realisation that actually, she doesn’t have to always do what her parents say just because she loves them. Sometimes they’re wrong. Often she knows better. They’re parents and they’re all crazy.

He represents another kind of awakening as well. She’d adored Archie but she’d never…wanted him like she wants Jughead. In reality, red-headed golden boys are really not her type. She doesn’t know exactly what it but it’s definitely Jughead.

And the whole way through he’s respected her boundaries, never pushed but never backed down to any kind of darkness or craziness she’s thrown his way. It’s the least she can do to respond in turn. They’re partners.

Betty Cooper doesn’t ever add more than two pictures of herself and Jughead Jones to her room. She doesn’t have to experience their love in photo frames. She’s got the real thing.


End file.
